First Sample of World's Most Powerful Rocket Engine Assembled for Testing

"The first RD-171MV engine for the new medium-lift Soyuz-5 Irtysh rocket has been assembled by NPO Energomash in the Moscow region and is being prepared for firing tests. This is the most powerful engine in the world," Rogozin wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Progress Rocket Space Center General Director Dmitry Baranov said in January that the future heavy-lift Yenisei rocket might be powered with RD-171 and RD-180 engines.

Earlier reports said that Yenisei would be based on another new Russian rocket, the Soyuz-5 Irtysh. It will be powered by a modernized modification of the RD-171 engine, the RD-171MV, the first of which will be supplied for testing in 2021.

In 2017, NPO Energomash provided documents for designer and dynamic mockups of the RD-171MV. This, the most powerful engine in the world, will have a thrust of 800 tonnes.